Civil Strife and a Tragic War, 1830-1865

Looming issues of slavery, states' sovereignty, cultural and religious differences pervaded the nation and caused strife between individuals and sections of the country in the years preceding the Civil War. Each individual chose a path to follow variously based on many factors, religious beliefs, political leanings, and their love and devotion to their nation, their section for the country, their family and their fellow man. We have included sketches of several Bedinger ancestors that reveal how they responded to the compelling issues of the period.

Slavery came to this country with he earliest settlers. Expressions of conscience by Bedinger kin may be inferred by those who freed their slaves. Nicolas Martiau, in his will of 1656, provided for and set free his two negro servants. In this act he preceded his great-great-great grandson, George Washington, by almost a century and a half. It is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, will on record in Virginia in which a planter provides for and gives freedom to slaves. [Ref. "Nicolas Martiau" by John Baer Stoudt.] George Washington freed his slaves in his will and Robert Rutherford and George Michael Bedinger freed slaves before their deaths. Caroline Bowne Bedinger, Benjamin Franklin Bedinger and Everett Wade Bedinger and others would not own slaves. George Michael Bedinger as a Kentucky and U. S. Congressman, tried to suppress the growth of slavery by legislation against importation of slaves. Many, if not daresay "all", ancestors fiercely opposed secession but remained faithful to the "Southern Cause". Many Bedinger descendants in Virginia and Missouri took up arms with the Confederacy. Those in Kentucky did not engage in armed conflict on either side.